Ethnic Somalis Chafe Under Official Scrutiny in Kenya : East Africa: A flood of refugees and armed marauders from across the border prompts Nairobi to check for citizenship.

It was not very long ago that members of this country’s sizable ethnic Somali community believed that years of discrimination and harassment by the black African majority had come to an end.

“Things were better than (at) any time in memory,” said one prominent Somali here.

No more. Angered by a flood of refugees and a surge of armed attacks by marauders from across its long border with Somalia, the Kenyan government has lately subjected its ethnic Somalis to an unprecedented “screening” exercise in which they are required to prove their Kenyan citizenship.

The exercise has created a political uproar here. Kenyan Somalis say they are victims of petty harassment that is as bad as it has ever been.

The issue has split the Somali community. The screening has been supervised by prominent Kenyan Somali politicians and bureaucrats, leading some to suggest that they are intent on deporting members of opposition tribes or clans to promote their own.

Also, the exercise comes at a time of unprecedented misery for Somalis in general. A heightening civil war in Somalia has sent thousands of people across the borders of that stricken country into Kenya and Djibouti. Human rights groups have charged both countries with mistreating the refugees.

One group, Africa Watch, charged that in September, the Kenyan authorities returned 60 Somali refugees to their own country at gunpoint. The report contends that 18 of the refugees were executed by Somali soldiers and 42 imprisoned.

Originally expected to last three weeks, or until the end of December, the screening process was extended until April. Under the rules, all ethnic Somalis over 18 are required to bring their national identity cards, passports and birth certificates for verification by panels of Somali elders at any of 51 “screening centers.” Those who pass muster are issued a pink identification card that must be produced on demand.

Kenyan authorities say 71 people “suspected to be citizens of Somalia” have been arrested, and sources in the government and the Somali community here say as many as 500 allegedly illegal aliens have been deported to Somalia.

Among those deported were leading Nairobi businessmen, a former official of the ruling party, the Kenya African National Union, even a former member of Parliament. Some held official citizenship or residence documents that were summarily declared to be forgeries.

None of these deportations were preceded by due process, as provided for in the Kenyan constitution.

“In our country, a person is innocent until proven guilty,” says Mohammed Ibrahim, a Kenyan Somali lawyer. “Nobody has been prosecuted or charged in a court of law. So on the facts we have, the Kenya government has deported 500 of its own citizens.”

Others who have registered protests include the Kenya section of the International Commission of Jurists and the Law Society of Kenya. Among ethnic Somalis who initially refused to submit to the screening was Ahmed Khalif, a former member of Parliament and head of the Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims. In response, the council stripped him of his post.

Kenya has long seen itself as a multi-ethnic, multiracial community, but the authorities seem to have always made an exception for ethnic Somalis. Thousands of these people are second- and third-generation Kenyans with Kenyan citizenship and passports.

People of Somali background, whose dark olive skin and Caucasian features distinguish them physically from African Kenyans, say they are often singled out by police on the street.

“If you are Somali-looking, the police will stop you and ask to see your documents,” says one prominent businessman who resides legally in Kenya as a political refugee. “It happens as often as you come across a policeman--at least one or two times a week.”

The distaste of Kenyan authorities for ethnic Somalis goes back to the eve of independence in 1963. In 1961, the British attached part of the former Italian Somaliland to its Kenya colony; it became part of Kenya upon independence in 1963.

The Somalis began a war of secession, which lasted until 1967, when the government of Somalia withdrew its support. But the state of emergency imposed during the unrest has never been lifted.

The so-called North-Eastern province has been troublesome ever since. In recent years the waxing and waning of civil war in neighboring Somalia has periodically sent tens of thousands of refugees into the region, along with hundreds of marauders known as shiftas, or bandits.

As the shiftas graduated from bows and arrows in the ‘60s and ‘70s to automatic weapons and motorized carriers, security in the region deteriorated. Eventually, the shiftas moved into elephant poaching, a crime that the Kenyans at one point traced directly to agents of Somali President Mohamed Siad Barre.

The poaching and a surge in armed attacks on tourists in Kenyan game parks, allegedly by Somali bandits, provoked the government to order the screening. So many alien Somalis had crossed the border to escape the civil war, the government said, that Kenya’s Somali population was overrun. The difficulty of telling a Kenyan Somali from an alien, it argued, made the screening necessary.